Have you ever heard of Slipknot, HIM, Evanescence, Metallica? That's right. They are all gothic metal bands. Gothic
metal is a genre of heavy metal music. It is a combination of the dark
atmosphere in gothic rock with the aggression of heavy metal music. Gothic
metal originated from Europe in the early 1990s, where it was seen as the
outgrowth of death and doom. (Wikipedia)
The lyrics
of this genre of music are extremely melodramatic and dark, as most
inspirations are from gothic fiction and personal experiences.
Music is a type of open circuit communication, therefore it
creates many opportunities for misinterpretation. This is why song lyrics must
be carefully written. People who tend to be sensitive will pay very close attention
to the words. Some may even take them literally. And by literal, I mean literal.
April 23, 2006: Jeremy Steinke (23) and Jasmine Richardson (12), slaughters girl's family, stabbing her mother, her father and eight-year-old brother to death.
Steinke and Richardson met at a punk concert early 2006. Since then, they started to go out and Richardson looked up to her boyfriend. Being ignorant and malleable, she eventually enamored with the gothic style.
Steinke's relationship with girlfriend, Richardson, was strongly opposed by her family. I mean, who would really want their premature daughter to be dating someone 11 years older than her, and has a not-so-friendly outer appearance? According to the investigations made, Richardson was already grounded for a month from seeing Steinke when she decided it was time to gut the whole family like fish.
Steinke often referred himself as a "300-year-old werewolf" who believes in "blood, destruction, guts, gore and greed". Hence I think it is safe to assume that he got most of his 'inspirations' from the lyrics of gothic metal band music.
Has anyone ever heard of Cradle of Filth? They are yet another gothic metal band.
Click on the YouTube video above. Can you hear what they are singing? No? Well, that's because they're not singing- they're just screaming and slamming on their bass guitars. This 'song' is different from the others. It's mostly instruments and screaming. These are the only lyrics for the song:
Thrill, kill the black
Walk among the weak by night Affliction...Deep as any burial
Take their worthless lives...
My, oh my, is that suggestive. This could be the reason why this band was brought up multiple times in court and in the press. Both Steinke and Richardson were obsessed with this band. I wouldn't be surprised if the lyrics by this band made an influence on the couple and resulted in the massive slaughtering of Richardson's family.
However, Cradle of Filth is not the only gothic metal band that sings violent and aggressive lyrics.
Avenge Sevenfold is another well-known heavy metal band. Some of their songs can even be found in the Nintendo Wii and Xbox game, Rockband.
Must have stabbed her fifty fucking times,
I can't believe it,
Ripped her heart out right before her eyes,
Eyes over easy, eat it, eat it, eat it
See what I mean?
If you went on Google now and typed in "list of gothic metal bands", you will notice that most of the band names make you feel very hopeless and dark because they give off a very eerie feeling:
Cryptal Darkness
Deathstars
For My Pain...
My Dying Bride
Rotting Christ
Theatre of Tragedy
The lyrics of these gothic mental band music seem to have the same effect as methamphetamine, marijuana, heroin or cocaine. Listening to them allows a temporary release of emotions and feeling. However, sometimes they do not choose a very pleasant way of relieving themselves.
Heavy metal artists such as Ozzy Ozbourne and Judas Priest "were made to hold their lyrics responsible for suicide attempts by their fans" (McCoy, 2009). There was also a shooting in 1999 at Colorado's Columbine High school that involved the lyrics by Marilyn Manson greatly influencing teenagers to be killers (McCoy, 2009)
Teenagers, in particular, are youngsters who are ignorant and vulnerable. They lack relevant world knowledge while they are at a concrete stage of cognitive development. Therefore if they are mislead at this crucial turning point of their lives, they may "[soak] up violent pop culture like a sponge", and cases like Steinke will unfortunately recur in our society (McCoy, 2009).
2 comments:
Goth culture is a culture that people know little about unless they either study the culture or are immersed in the culture as a Goth themselves. Like the different people in different sects of culture around the world, Goths may have a similar set of ideologies, music taste and style but that does not necessarily mean that they share the same worldview (Gothic Teens, 2009) . It is also true that a lot of lyrics that are strangely sung give off a violent feeling of bloody death and torture, different people respond differently to exposure of these lyrics. As Angie mentioned in her blog post, teenagers are particular susceptible to the negative effects of heavy metal music because of their tender age. Though music lyrics can be a powerful medium, I would say that there may be influences outside of the music teenagers listen to that encourage them to be violent like social status, a rocky childhood, or influences of older people in their lives like the way Jasmine Richardson may have been influenced by her boyfriend as mentioned in Angie’s post (Monacelli, 2012). This blog post directly touches on many different ongoing discourses in our world including but not limited to youth violence, influences of music, subcultures of our society, and specifically gothic cultures and what ideologies they may or may not hold. Gothic cultures are something that evades our inspection and I personally think that we make it that way. Our society tends to gravitate towards the average and the socially accepted norm. We do not generally appreciate the social tendencies of those who do not match our tastes and those who do not match our tastes fade into the background of the mosaic we are.
Gothic teens > http://gothic-teens.webs.com/gothsubculture.htm
Monacelli's article > http://antonia-monacelli.hubpages.com/hub/Murderous-Children-Jasmine-Richardson
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